Between De Jun and Jue Min: How Toegye Differentiating Practical and Fake Learning

Title

Between De Jun and Jue Min: How Toegye Differentiating Practical and Fake Learning

Author

Chih-che TSAI

Page

1-30

DOI

10.6163/TJEAS.202412_21(2).0001

Abstract

This paper draws on Yu Ying-shih’s Zhu Xi’s Historical World to re-examine the thought of Toegye. Just as Zhu Xi lived in the so-called “post-Wang Anshi era,” under the shadow of repeated literati purges, Toegye’s historical context can similarly be described as the “post-Jo Gwang-jo era” (post-Gi-myo era). Reflecting on the lessons of the Gi-myo literati purges, Toegye proposed the concept of “false learning leads to failure” and, with his emphasis on “practical learning,” explored Zhu Xi's letters in depth, advocating that “only with the completion of learning can one take on responsibility.” In contrast to Yu Ying-shih’s classification of the two paths—“winning the favor of the ruler” and “enlightening the people”—Toegye represents a different model of East Asian Confucian scholar-official: that of the “inheritor of the Confucian orthodoxy.” Returning to the historical context, the proposition that “only with the completion of learning (inner cultivation) can one take on responsibility (outer governance)” was not meant to establish a political logic of sequential order or necessary causality. By observing Toegye’s frequent emphasis on his own “incomplete learning” through personal practice, we can better understand that the Confucian concept of “inner cultivation and outer governance” is less a form of blind moral absolutism and more a form of self-criticism and caution directed at those in power. Even today, this notion may still retain a certain degree of legitimacy.

Keyword

Toegye (Yi Hwang), literati purge, post-Jo Gwang-jo era (post-Gimyo era), failure with fake learning, inner cultivation and outer governance

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